Time Travel Tour

An app Timescope uses to run virtual reality tours for groups of visitors in Paris. Walking along the Seine, or across the Champ de Mars facing the Eiffel Tower on another route, the group stops at regular intervals to look into their headsets, where a historical reconstruction plays. Between stops, an audio guide takes over. For about an hour, all these media are synchronised, paced to the walking speed of a group, and made to be watched and heard on the spot.

Each group is led by a facilitator, who is there first of all to fix technical problems: a headset out of sync, a volume too loud or too low, someone who can’t work out how to use it. They also set everything up at the start of each tour. These moments are intense. A group can be fifteen to twenty people, and up to three groups rotate in parallel, each at a different stage of the tour. Headsets charge in a shared pool while they are not in use, and there must always be enough of them charged, connected and ready for everyone.

The tablet app is made for the facilitator, and its main constraint is speed. The group must never wait, and there is no room for a wrong move. Each headset goes through four steps: pulled from the rack, switched on, spotted in the app’s list as soon as it connects, added to the group. Then the group gets its language and volume, and once everyone is ready, the facilitator resets the viewing angle and starts. All of this for ten or twenty people, done by someone standing up and physically helping them with their headsets, on a hot day, with sunlight glaring on the screen. Hence a very high contrast, large buttons, and an interface that asks for as little attention as possible.